Dealing with movie theater bureaucracy.

The BBQ Pit
1

I never had to go through so much BS just to see one movie.

So me and my friends want to see Kill Bill 2. Two of us are underage, two are not.

The plan was for two of us buy tickets and then comeback later and two of them again. So we buy our first tickets with no problem. We wait 15 min and go back in. We should have waited more though, because the ticket lady remembered me (there was one teller and I went in first.)

Here is where the drama picked up (if you can call it drama.) I had devised the perfect plan, I would simply tell her the ticket was lost, and if she persisted, I would, with a sad face, tell her I was robbed.

If you know anything about movie theater or small store bureaucracy, then you know the tellers are never fucking sure of themselves, when they can’t be sure. They act like they are sure, that is what they are trained to do so a customer would back off, but I did not back off. To make matters easier I had a nerdy fat teller with little self esteem.

So she sells me the ticket. But no, she is not done yet. She wants to catch me giving the tickets to my friends. I however know the second rule of dealing with small store bureaucracy. You have to know their stupid checks to catch a customer in a lie. So the fat teller, assuming we had given our current tickets away (we had given away the ones we bought before) checks the time of our tickets.

Some security guard comes running along and wonders what is going on. He is baffled by the fat ass teller who is bitching about the times on the tickets. When the guard figures out the story, the two kids without ID get through, leaving him to check the kids who actually had ID.

Then we get to the movie itself where some big black dude was checking tickets. He figures out two kids do not have ID, but being the nice guy that he thinks he is, he lets us in. Makes you wonder why the fuck he would check if he was gonna let us through.

The story is nothing special, I just like to write about mindless BS that happens.

2

“Pit! Pit! Pit!”

3

Why didn’t you get the two underage people to buy tickets to Disney’s Anthropomorphic Anal Animal Adventures, then have them sneak like vengeful ninja into the other cinema, showing Exterminate William? 'Cause you’re too busy RAGING AGAINST THE SYSTEM, that’s why. FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY.

4

Funny how that works, I was just at the theater the other day (to see Kill Bill v2 no less) with my friend and his little sister who is underage (not by much, but she looks WAY younger). I get my ticket, she is right behind me and asks for hers, guy asks to see id and of course she is not old enough. what do we do? she hands me her cash (we are still right at the counter) and I say i’d like another one and voila! the guy sells it to me and I hand it to her right there in front of him. No problems at all.

I honestly have no idea why some tellers get so bitchy about it, afaik they are under no legal obligation not to sell them and the vast majority don’t even care no matter how old you look (around here at least). My best guess is the ones who wont sell them are the ones sick of parents complaning that their kid saw axe murderer 2k instead of fluffy bunny world as if it is the theater’s fault they left their kids there unsupervised.

5

If the person is underage they can’t sell the ticket to them. But if they are with someone who is of age, they can sell the ticket and the others can go in with them.

I took my brother to a few movies this way that he wanted to see.

6

So you’re trying to do something that can get the cinema owner in trouble. And you’re bitching because the ticket taker and security guards are trying to do their jobs. What a piece of work you are.

7

There was a lady working at the local cinema that, when I was seeing a couple of movies a week or so I knew on a first name basis. She checked my ID EVERY FRIGGIN’ TIME though, when I went into R movies. I don’t understand why, it wasn’t a policy to check everyone or even most people. Its a smaller town, so she knew me as well after a few weeks.

So everytime I dug my ID out of my wallet, showed it to her, then paid for my tickets. Its been awhile since I’ve been back there, I just don’t watch as many movies.

8

They us in even after the guy foung out two of us were under age. So they did not do there job. It makes you wonder why they put us through so much BS in the first place.

In that theater you have to be over 17 to buy one ticket and over 21 to buy more than one.

Also if I was a cop I suspect the teller would get fined for selling me two tickets. Though the fine would not hold up if I lost the previous tickets and had no choice but to buy new ones. The teller might have gotten upset that we were trying to trick us. However she would want me to do the same thing for her if she were in my position, so she was just being a bitch that particular day.

9

Why is there no edit?

They let us in is what the first part should have said. Also when you get to the right spot it should be trick them not “trick us.”

I promise I won’t let it happen again.

10

I tried to break a rule and it was slightly harder than I thought. Woe is me! :stuck_out_tongue:

11

You forget their job. You can’t edit because some people would say something inflammatory and then go back and take it out. Only moderators and above can edit a post.
She is not ‘being a bitch’ she is doing her job. It would not be unheard of for say a newspaper to send a group of underage kids to local theatres on the weekend a big R rated film opens. (Kill Bill Vol. 2 being a prime example) Then the paper would publish who let in kids and who did not. Then there would be all kinds of trouble, but not really much legal trouble.

So do you have a job? How would you feel about people coming to your job and trying to put stuff past you or do stuff that could get you fired?

12

Bolding mine…

How are these descriptions relevant to your story? Describing people in this way will get you in a world of shit around here.

13

Off to the Pit, I suppose.

So can a movie theater owner actually get in trouble for letting people into movies when they’re younger than the rating states?

Over here, the movie ratings are indicative. Sure, if you run a porn cinema and routinely let in 12 year olds, you’ll be in trouble soon enough. But a 16 year old can easily purchase a ticket for an 18+ movie. It’s ultimately your own responsibility.

14

Yeah, cause you know… calling someone black makes you a racist.
:rolleyes:

15

Ratings have no legal force here either, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

Every once in a while some person or group will raise a stink about “underage” children being admitted to inappropriate movies and no small business wants negative publicity.

Also, while there are independently owned theaters, most are owned by Megalithic Corporate Chains, and local management has little discretion when it comes to Corporate Policy. Again, they just don’t want any trouble (the twenty-first century version of “shunning”) for the same reason.

16

Not legal trouble, more like community outrage and depending on the location. There are people who would equate it with allowing someone under 21 to buy beer or under 18 to buy cigarettes, like what Zebra said.

It was hot button, unnecessary descriptive. Around here, that’s a good way to bring down a pile of shit on the head of whomever posted it, which is what Honey was saying.

17

Back when Terminator 2 came out, it was the super hot ticket of the week, and 4 of us wanted to get tix well in advance. We are all 20 years old, so it’s not exactly a crime here. My friend is dropped off to get the tickets, waits on line and asks for 4 tickets, he is denied because he isn’t 21. So, we enlist my older brother (27) to buy 4 tickets for us. this is sort of humiliating because we’re not exactly children here. He waits on line, and when he asks for 4 tickets the teller says “Who are you buying these tickets for?”

His reply?

“My wife and 2 kids.” :cool:

18

Oh please. I could see the poster was new. Just giving a heads up is all.

19

Just to complicate matters the US has the NC-17 which means no child under 17 admitted under any circumstances. Of course that has no force of law to back it up but if a parent brought their own child to the theatre the manager is supposed to tel them no.

This happend to me when I was a movie theatre manager and we were showing Showgirls. Some woman brought her 3 or 4 year old with her because she didn’t want to hire a babysitter. Now in NYC, where this took place, there is a city ordinace that says movie theatres can keep kids under 5 our of R rated films that start after 5 pm so the kids won’t annoy the other customers. So I used that law to keep them from going to see the movie.

20

I just bought movie tickets about five minutes ago, sitting right here at my desk at work, from my computer. Every time I go to the movies, I turn to my friends and say, “Who in the hell waits in line for the teller anymore?”

Then I was going to flame the hell out of the OP for a) not using movietickets.com to buy tickets or b) using one of those little kiosks in front of the theater to buy their tickets.

Then I remembered that many kids under 18, and many under 21 do not possess credit cards, which you need to do either.

You may now resume trashing your local movie theater. Or defending it, depending on what you were doing before I butted in with this pointless post. :smiley: